It’s easy to understand why foreigners distrust the CCP government as all of us tend to project our values onto them (and other governments) so we reject their priorities which differ from ours. Human nature tends towards ‘universalising’ our thoughts onto every one else. Our behaviour is hardly unique as this is human nature.
We assume the people of China cannot wait to live with freedom to decide everything from those ruling the country to attending political rallies and church services on an hourly basis because we see those options as unavailable as they operate in our country. We inherently distrust centralising of power (until we embrace restrictions that sure feel like too much central power if one is prevented from exercising some personal right). We also believe we are a society that functions pretty well with these freedoms unless we look at the past few decades where divisions between us seem to prevent anything from working for everyone’s behalf.
We know that the Chinese young were not shackled by the One-child policy in place from the late 1970s to 2016 as the birth rate is not skyrocketing up following either the abandonment of the policy or Xi Jinping’s not-too-subtle urging that people produce more Han children. Turns out the young in China want to exercise choices based on their personal preferences, needs, and analysis of the future for their nation.
The CCP does some truly horrific things such as incarcerating Uighurs for their ethno-religious differences from some amorphous Han culture that Beijing wants to equate with being Chinese citizens. Uighurs can’t go their separate ways as they were somewhat able after China began exercising suzerainty over Xinjiang Province (home of most Uighurs in the country) in the mid-17th century. With the distance involved and the internal vicissitudes of the Middle Kingdom for much of that almost four hundred year period. Beijing (whether the Manchu Qing Dynasty or the primarily Han Republic of China in the early half of the 20th century or People’s Republic since 1949) largely thwarted any attempts to diminish Han dominance over the area.
The decision over the past ten years to force Uighurs to abandon their culture, religion, and largely ethnic history is akin to Soviet attempts to homogenize society for some unexplained objective. Several high profile terrorist actions between 2000 and 2015, including three dozen people stabbed at the Kunming train station in Yunnan province and smaller attacks across the country, indicated that Uighur violence, contemporary with terrorism associated with Al-Qaeda around the globe, could target Han. It was definitely possible because Han treat the Uighurs as a substandard part of China.
I personally saw the increased attention by security forces, of which China has many layers throughout the country, during my four visits to Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province between 2002 and 2012. I don’t claim to have inside information as the evidence of police officers monitoring Uighurs, especially young men, was more open with each visit. By my last experience in 2012, Uighurs still lived in the provincial capital, Urumqi, along with roughly 4 million people, but they obviously lived a rather segregated existence under scrutinised, poorer conditions.
Since at least 2017, overhead imagery provided evidence the segregation was more formal with more dramatic implications. Uighur camps isolated men from their families and the broader community. Sending men to ‘re-education facilities’ had to undermine family survival while decreasing the growing Islamic population. Re-education also logically promoted a false narrative about Uighurs’ role in Han society, again conducted without allowing them to perpetuate their Islamic faith, Turkic or Persian languages, and their overall culture as one of China’s 56 minorities.
Beijing rejects criticism of its treatment of Uighurs yet so much of the world stays silent. Islamic states such as Indonesia or Saudi Arabia prefer the links with Beijing over trade, resources, petroleum, or overlapping interests in broader foreign policy. The Uighur segregation does not rise to the level of any one country taking on the CCP to alter the result, much as true for the Tibetans under Beijing’s yoke as well. It is indeed a domestic issue, unfortunately.
The question this leaves is why is Beijing so determined to force the Uighurs to abandon their past? Is it authoritarianism for the sake of exerting power as we so often assume? We use this as a standard explanation for many reasons, not the least is that we find CCP assumptions and behaviours so different from our country. Historically, we are also unmitigatingly opposed to any regime’s activities if Communist is part of the ruling elite’s name.
Is it fear of terrorism because the Party, like any dynasty ruling the Middle Kingdom, worries about luan? We know the Party claims that various incidents involved Uighur attacked Han, forcing increased security measures in Xinjiang over the past several years. (Of course, the Party never recognised that encouraging millions of Han to move to Urumqi to balance ethnicity of the city might have disadvantaged the Uighurs, I suspect). Any regime governing the vast population in China worries about chaos, defined in our lingo as disorder. Purported (I have no idea whether Uighurs conducted the attacks ascribed to them in 2013, whether in Yunnan or that of a car killing pedestrians front of the Forbidden City) Uighur violence would merit a state designation of crime but I wonder if China’s leaders conveniently use Uighurs as targets as Putin uses the Chechens.
It is overall fear of challenges to the CCP legitimacy? The ‘arrangement’ (I no longer use the term ‘bargain’ as it’s really one-sided rather than mutual as the latter term implies) between the CCP and the population is that the standard of living will increase under the Party’s rule but the population does not challenge the associated decisions. Americans find the idea of no discussion incomprehensible but China is a society much more aligned with Confucian principles such as harmony through relationships. The Uighurs with their religion, culture, language, and transborder links to other Uighurs could be seen as representing defiance to that societal ‘arrangement’. Again, as the superb Georgetown University professor James Millward discusses in Eurasian Crossroads, the Uighur position in China has bedeviled Beijing for centuries. CCP sensitivity about its own legitimacy leads to a regime preventing any challenges to raise inconvenient questions about the Party’s rule.
The Party’s eventual steps to target, less overtly but in documented cases, Han Muslims, known as Hui Chinese, leads me to wonder if this isn’t a manifest representation of the Party’s abject fear of being seen as weak. It might well have been that the Uighurs as a religious-ethnic group were a large enough symbol of being ‘different’ in China that later caused the Party officials to begin fearing a contagion effect for other Muslims, even though Islam is actually one of the five religions authorised by the Chinese constitution. Under Xi Jinping’s paranoid rule, religion of any sort except faith in the Communist Party is a target of government pressure. To my knowledge Hui are not incarcerated or women forced to intermarry with Han, as reports indicated several years ago was true for Uighurs, but the 10.5 million Han do feel less a part of society than a generation ago.
Is this the effect of an economic model running out of steam? Certainly things could not have improved for Hans competing with Uighurs as job pressures began shifting after 2008 as things slowed down. CCP critics reminded us that a possible Uighur reason for terrorism was their ill treatment in the economy vis-a-vis Han workers with the latters far more able to get meaningful employment.
Or, in this era of dubious news, China would ask why Americans and the west so obviously take the side of Uighurs who may well have ties to Islamic radicals in Afghanistan (with whom Xinjiang shares a narrow border) or Pakistan (longer border) rather than listening to Beijing’s proclamations of taking steps for its population’s security? This seems a decidedly non-acceptable proposition to those in the United States yet we so readily embrace other made up tales. In this era of mounting fear of China’s threats to our world, this seems an absurd topic but it is fascinating that we don’t even consider the possibility of Beijing having genuine concerns on the topic.
Today’s column explores an actual policy question and how we view it. Our perspectives lead us to various responses, each with its own implications. Resulting actions create all sorts of consequences, even in a distant place in interior China where the domestic concerns are not ours but theirs. Americans readily accept our right to opine, if not act, on what we see as a violation of universal human rights yet this repudiation of the principle of respecting sovereignty is precisely what we accuse China’s rulers of doing in other places around the world. But we see ourselves as benevolent actors rather than the muckrakers the CCP fears we are.
Our views and Beijing’s differ significantly on this question, on rights, on justifications, and on so much. What is your reaction? What does your knowledge of the situation tell you? None of us—NONE of us—has clear knowledge of why Beijing acts as it does yet we are convinced our interpretation must be the right one. They do the same with us. Can these types of differing analyses play into additional problems—or solutions?
I don’t have the answer. I am unimpressed by Han claims about Uighur violence but I may have been taken in by seeing a pretty poor people averting their eyes in 2002 when twelve westerners first came through their market. I welcome your thoughts. Does it really matter to us? I would appreciate your ideas on any and all of these columns. That is the point of ACC: the expand measured, civil conversations on a broad array of topics. I thank you for your time. I especially thank those who support the column with resources.
It was decidedly cloudy this morning, though the sun broke through this afternoon. Thank goodness the budding plants brought us colour for almost all of the day.
Be well and be safe. FIN
Preeti Bhattacharji, ‘Uighurs and China’s Xinjiang Region’, CFR.org, 29 May 2012, retrieved at https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/uighurs-and-chinas-xinjiang-region
Chinese Human Rights Defenders and Hope Umbrella International Foundation, Will the Hui be Silently Erased?, 22 March 2023, retrieved at https://www.nchrd.org/2023/03/will-the-hui-be-silently-erased-a-groundbreaking-report-on-muslim-hui-minoritys-crisis-of-survival-amid-chinese-government-policies-aiming-to-eliminate-hui-identity/
James Millward, Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang, revised and updated. New York: Columbia University Press, 2021